Park Models Give Campground a Great ‘Escape’

March 17, 2014 by RVBusinessComments Off on Park Models Give Campground a Great ‘Escape’

Escape park model interior (Photo courtesy of Canoe Bay)

The tiny house movement has become a big thing as more and more people try to live with a smaller financial, environmental and physical footprint. As Alek Lisefski noted in his Tiny Project, it’s about less house and more life, according to a posting on treehugger.com.

It’s also about laws that regulate what can go down a road, what can go on a property under zoning bylaws, what code it gets built under. That’s why so many of the tiny houses are less than 8-feet-6-inches wide and weigh less than 10,000 pounds, so that they can go down the road towed by a private car and be classed as an RV. Historically, people would take their little RVs and go to RV parks, where they remain on their chassis but get hooked up to water and sewer. But they didn’t move very much, and people would put down roots and need a little more space. So a new standard was developed, the park model RV, that could be up to 400 square feet in the U.S., with an ANSI standard specification for safety that makes it harder for the self-build types to qualify.

Four hundred square feet doesn’t sound like much but it’s bigger than many one-bedroom apartments; you can build a really nice little house at that size. Architect Kelly Davis, principal emeritus at SALA, who has been doing stunning little cottages and cabins for years, designed the Escape for Dan Dobrowolski, owner of a resort in Wisconsin called Canoe Bay, and who is offering it for sale starting at $79,000. It doesn’t feel at all like an RV.